Robot Arm Mimics Human Gestures in Real Time (Video)

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If you are a geek of a certain age, there was a time in your life when you thought no job could be more satisfying than working at the storage houses of the future operating a “power loader” suit featured in the movie Aliens. This dream of tech borne super human strength may now be one step closer to reality. The University of Tsukuba’s Biological Cybernetics Lab recently unveiled a robotic arm that can mimic human gestures in (very near) real time. The system reads human arm and hand movements via two cameras over 100 times per second, and then transmits the data for the machine to mimic. The team has even programmed the software to recognize 100 distinct gestures, so that the machine will reliably replicate common actions such as picking up an object or waving hello.

On a side note, we hope the team at Tsukuba didn’t spend too much time or money on the tracking system, as the past few months have seen a glut of open source Xbox Kinect hacks that have achieved reliable gesture recognition for little more than $150 and an afternoon or two’s worth of programming.

A powerful extrahuman appendage has many potential applications. Most notably, they would find a quick home in the construction and manufacturing industries. They could be attached to remote research bots that have the ability to toil through dangerous environments for both exploration and profit. And, of course, the US military is surely already at work dreaming up designs for remote fighters in their ever increasing bid to create a soldierless battle field. And then looking beyond the practical, if they were able to produce a basic cable robot battle show based on little more than RC cars with a radial saw connected, imagine what robotic sports of the future might be unleashed once this technology of super human puppetry is perfected.

And, of course, if we do run into gigantic space bugs with acidic blood, I know what kind of suit I want to be wearing.